


On My Feet Again

by astoryandasong



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Families of Choice, M/M, Pack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-28
Updated: 2012-04-28
Packaged: 2017-11-04 12:08:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astoryandasong/pseuds/astoryandasong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things change.  This time for Monroe they change for the better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On My Feet Again

Juliette gets injured by a Hexenbeast six months after Monroe and Nick send the Reapers their little package. In that time they’ve saved sixteen lives and found 3 missing people. Monroe has fixed thirty clocks and helped Nick bury three bodies.

He’s gotten quite friendly with Juliette, as friendly as you get with a person when you’re constantly lying to her. Nobody, he thinks, could say that they didn't see this coming. Except maybe Nick. Nick, who looks as if he wants to cry maybe, or kick something.

He won’t tell Juliette the truth, which is why when Juliette suggests she move back in with her mother for a while, he doesn’t argue with her.

If he beats up the practice dummy with a little more venom than usual that night, Monroe doesn’t mention it.

*************************

Nick wallows for a while. He spends a lot of time in the trailer, scribbling furiously, drawing creatures and fight scenes. He drops by occasionally with coffee and food, otherwise Nick wouldn’t eat. Monroe supposes he’s the only Blutbad in history to lounge in a Grimm’s sanctuary. Aware of the times that focus is turned on him.

When he looks later, it’s a pretty good likeness.

************************

Monroe is probably going to go down in the histories as one of the oddest and most famous Blutbaden who ever lived. He is friends with a Grimm, after all.

But not just a Grimm, other Wesen too.

They trust him because Nick trusts him, fangs and all. After he helps Nick rescue a missing mouse girl they start to bring him little gifts. A pie here, a loaf there. Whenever they goout working on a case he comes back and there is a little basket lined in red, waiting for him. Almost a joke with the big bad wolf.

It’s nice to be trusted for a change, to be welcomed into people's lives. That’s all Nick- he seems to bring out the best in people. Including him, if he’s honest. Before Nick all he had wanted was to be left alone. With his clocks, with his cello, with his regrets. While he’d never blown any houses down like Angelina, he’s certainly done his share of huffing and puffing over the years.

There’s the thrill, too. Different from the ones he’d left behind, better. It feels good to put things back together again.

Which is how he finds himself opening his door at all hours to various Wesen looking for Nick’s help. Roddy brings the first one, who spills her metaphorical guts and cries into his clean handkerchief for a good hour before Nick arrives. When Monroe puts his arm around her, she leans in and buries her face in his shoulder. Her hair smells human clean but her creature smell is of burrows and hedgerows. It startles him to be touched that way, with no fear.

They keep coming after that. Fearful at first and thankful later, always surprised at how Monroe has turned his fierce violence into fierce protectiveness.

He supposes that it’s only natural after all. Wolves are pack animals and Monroe is certainly wolfish for all that he’s vegan. The smaller creatures have started to feel almost like cubs to him. Tiny and in need of protecting. Portland is his territory and these are his pack. So large and strange, expanding all the time.

Nick’s no cub though. Nick is strong and fast, protective of their territory and their odd pack. If he so much as growled, Monroe would show him his belly. But Nick would never growl, because that’s not the sort of pack leader he is. He’s had pack leaders before who mistook fear for respect, who used violence to keep a false peace. Nick doesn’t even know he’s leading.

Which is why Monroe loves him.

******************************

Nick and Juliette sell their happy ever after house and split the proceeds amicably in the fall.

They’re having dinner and Nick is groaning about hipsters and the price of rentals in Portland. Suddenly it’s unbearable, the thought of Nick living alone. The wolf inside hadn’t been overjoyed about Juliette, but she was pack in her way too and always would be.

But alone.

“You should just move into the spare room.” He says, trying for casual and failing. “I could use the rent money, to be frank. Plus it would cut out the middle wolf for all my visitors.”

Nick looks at his plate for a moment, pushing his stir fry around. All of a sudden his shoulders relax. He looks up and smiles.

“Yeah, I’d like that.”

It feels right to him, Nick’s smell in his house. The thought of more of it, all the time makes his mouth water.

“Just don’t leave your wet towels on the bathroom floor, buddy.”

Nick rolls his eyes and grins.  
“I guess I’ll have to ditch my red bathrobe as well if I don’t want to get all gobbled up.”

Monroe sputters and Nick laughs, grins.

What big teeth you have, Monroe thinks.

*******************************  
Hank helps Nick move in over the next week. He’s weirded out by the whole situation but clearly trying not to be. Monroe thinks it's more the vegetarian thing than anything else, personally. As he’s making coffee he can’t help overhear Nick and Hank talking by the car as Hank is getting ready to drive off.

“You know you can tell me anything.” Hank, trying to be the best friend he can be.

“Thanks Hank. I will.”

“All of this is obviously part of why you and Juliette split. At least tell me why you spend so much time with the guy.”

He can hear Nick’s sharp little intake of breath. Smell the aftershave Hank put on for a date last night.

“He’s different from anyone I’ve ever met. Interesting.”

“And tall and handsome?”

“Something like that.”

He tunes out them, hums to himself. Listening in isn’t fair. But he allows himself a small smile and a little bit of hope.

******************************

As it turns out, the human beings in Portland can suck just as much as the creatures. Five prostitutes turn up dead within the space of a month. Nick comes home every so often to shave and change his clothes, looking worried and tired.

“You don’t have to take care of me.” He says when Monroe hands him sandwiches as he goes out of the door.

“I know, but I want to.”

Nick pauses a second and looks, really looks at him.

“Thanks.”

When he’s gone, Monroe does the laundry and changes Nick’s sheets. If he rolls around a little in them first, nobody has to know about it.

*********************************

They close the case Hank and Nick. They catch the guy and get rip roaringly drunk to celebrate. Nick will always feel guilty that they didn't catch him before the toll became six and then seven, but that’s just who Nick is. An idealist to the core. Both of them stumble in and start snoring on his couch after closing time.

He makes them bacon the next morning, salivating all the while. He lets himself have some too, because this is a celebration morning.

“You have my blessing, Monroe. The way you cook bacon is a revelation.”

Hank sits at the kitchen island and sips his coffee in comfortable silence as they both eat and wait for Nick to wake up.

When he does Monroe understands all the soppiness about sleepy eyes and messy hair. Here’s the cub part of him, Monroe thinks. And he shows it to me.

As Nick walks by him for coffee he lays a hand on the small of Monroe’s back. Hank just grins and opens up the paper as Nick looks up at Monroe and turns his brightest smile on him.

Nick kisses him in the middle of the kitchen as Hank tries not to laugh. It feels good and right and warm in every part of him, man and wolf.

There’s a knock at the door then. Nick looks at Hank and then back at him and he gives a nod as he goes to answer the door.

“Hank, I have something crazy to tell you...”

END

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] On My Feet Again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/499498) by [astoryandasong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astoryandasong/pseuds/astoryandasong), [Eridanie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eridanie/pseuds/Eridanie)




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